


Down All Your Darkest Roads

by mneiai



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Anti-Jedi Sentiments (Star Wars), Clone Trooper Inhibitor Chips (Star Wars), Dark, Kinda, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, Obsessive Behavior, Order 66 Aftermath (Star Wars), Possessive Behavior, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Sith magic, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Star Wars Rare Pairs Exchange 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-05
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27892582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mneiai/pseuds/mneiai
Summary: Nothing is left to hold Fox back, there's no reason not to make a deal. Not to try again.
Relationships: CC-1010 | Fox/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 24
Kudos: 242
Collections: Star Wars Rare Pairs 2020





	Down All Your Darkest Roads

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SparkySheep](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SparkySheep/gifts).



> When I saw who I got and what sort of things you'd requests, I figured I'd try to hit a few different notes on a rift I know you enjoy. I hope you like it! <3

The last message Fox had ever received from one of his batchmates had been a private text comm from Cody:

> The war is almost over.  
> You should tell him.  
> Stop torturing both of you.

He'd given a blunt reply.

< I will when the Senate actually declares it over. Happy?

After, no one sent messages anymore.

No one responded to their own names.

For a time, Fox had been like that. But the pain in his head that had always vaguely been there had become worse and worse. When he heard Cody--CC-2224--report that the traitor Kenobi had been shot down, it had nearly driven him to his knees from its intensity. And it had grown worse with every day that passed within the new Empire.

He thought the only thing keeping him alive was the mark on his skin, still the unfilled outline of an unmatched soul, not filled in and faded out to show his other half had died. Somewhere out there, General Kenobi lived. So Fox kept living.

The whispers that Fox had always ignored centered around Palpatine’s office and rooms, at the very edges of his senses, had only gotten worse. They haunted Fox, following his dreams and empty waking moments surrounded by his soulless-seeming Vod’e.

Finally, one day, he couldn’t take it anymore. He sought out the source of those whispers, no one paying any mind to another “flesh droid” clone going through the Emperor’s rooms.

The object felt cold, felt as though it made the entire room around it cold, and some deep part of himself warned he shouldn’t get closer, shouldn’t touch it. 

He didn’t listen. It wasn’t as though he had anything left to lose.

Whispers grew into screams, so loud but clearer, surer--promises in exchange for something. All his dreams. If he'd just...give it something.

He knew enough now to know what Palpatine was, had worked out much of what he’d done. He’d heard about the Sith so much from the others during the war, about the things they witnessed from Dooku and Ventress.

His Vod’e were gone. Someday soon his soulmate would be caught and killed. And Fox would remain a slave serving the man behind it all.

Fox reached for it.

***

The room was the same. Or, no, not quite. There had been things moved. There were objects missing.

But the one he’d used was still in his hand. Fox tucked it into his pocket. 

He slipped out of the vault, surprised that the hallways around it were empty. When he finally reached the back halls of the Senate, there were no troopers around, no Senators passing by he recognized. He hurriedly took the servants’ passages, avoiding contact with anyone, hoping whoever was working security wasn’t paying attention to the holocams.

Taking off his helmet and stealing a cloak made him feel a little better as he wandered the streets.

Up until the point he saw what year it was.

7944 CRC.

He hadn’t even _existed_ , yet. None of the clones had, not even Boba.

Of all the actions he’d expected a Sith artifact to take, this seemed too good, too perfect.

***

Once he accepted that the most simple answer (time travel, somehow) was right, he checked the Senate bank accounts he knew of. Emergency accounts, rarely used, were still exactly where and what they’d be in the future. And then Palpatine’s--Senator Palpatine’s--private accounts, the ones that _he’d_ never used but had always been suspiciously large, were there, as well.

He emptied them, making sure that it wouldn’t be traced, the systems themselves having not been updated by the time he took over guarding the Senate. With the credits, he procured an apartment, purchased a wardrobe and a speeder, everything a person supposedly needed on Coruscant.

His apartment had a view of the Jedi Temple. He spent hours staring in that direction, wondering if his soulmate--he’d be only a Padawan, dragged around by a Master that Cody had despised the few times he’d spoken of him--could sense that the other part of him was out there somewhere.

Fox had come back for Obi-Wan, that had been a promise the artifact had made.

The artifact that sat in a corner of a bookshelf, whispering still. About the promises, about what Fox could do. Should do. _Had to do_.

***

Serenno was his first stop. Dooku lacked the paranoia he would gain around the war, still seeing himself as just a private citizen, even if he was a system ruler. Fox infiltrated easily enough, shielding his mind as the Alphas had taught the CCs to do when around Force users.

He was off planet before Dooku’s body was found, a fire set as an afterthought raging through the vault where he’d kept his Dark artifacts.

***

He had studied the Naboo Blockade in training, he knew the basics, but the _details_ he knew only from rumors and random conversations. Skywalker had never been shy to talk about the Jedi Master who had “saved” him from slavery or the Boonta Eve Classic he had won to get off-planet.

Fox might not have known exactly when Obi-Wan would get to Naboo, but he did know the general timeline for when he’d be on Tatooine. So Fox went there, a few months early, with nothing better to do than wait.

Or he thought that was the case. He wandered the streets, he learned the locals, he came up with a sturdy enough backstory to pass a quick glance.

He ran across Anakin Skywalker, a young boy, but still so obviously Anakin Skywalker.

The rage that filled him felt like it had eclipsed the two suns.

This was the boy who would grow to betray Fox’s soulmate in the worst of ways. Who would use the Vod’e like droids.

Killing one slave boy, especially one owned by a small businessman instead of a Hutt or someone with power, was so easy. No one even blinked an eye when a “mechanical failure” ended his life, most seemed to even be expecting it.

Fox knew it changed very little, but it _felt_ good. And it protected Obi-Wan against another heartbreak.

***

It was Qui-Gon Jinn who wandered into town, accompanied by a girl who could only be Amidala and a Gungan who was clearly Binks. Just as in the story Skywalker had regaled an uninterested Guard complement, they were stranded and desperate to leave.

Jinn was exactly what Fox always expected Jedi to be like--overbearing, self-righteous, with an edge of casual cruelty as he spoke to his traveling companions. If he’d survived into the Clone Wars, Fox wondered if he would have treated the Vod’e with even more carelessness, if he would have even cared about body counts or injuries.

When Fox “ran into” him, he played the part of a Coruscanti bodyguard abandoned when his client could no longer afford his fees. And Jinn _tried to mindtrick him_ in the middle of the street.

“I worked as a guard on _Coruscant_ ,” he told Jinn, laying on a heavy Coruscanti accent (one he knew that Obi-Wan himself had, and that as much as he disdained it, would always ease something inside of him), “I know what Jedi are capable of, Knight…?”

Jinn looked like he’d swallowed something foul. “ _Master_ Qui-Gon Jinn,” he’d finished. “And it is imperative that I return with my companions to Coruscant.”

“I’ve been trying to get a safe ride back that way for the last week. It will be easier to get your ship repaired than find passage with someone who isn’t going to drug and sell you off to the nearest slavers, especially with a Force sensitive and a pretty young girl involved..”

Amidala--a Queen, at this time, and seeming to no more fulfill that role than she did Senator--shook her head. “We could only find the part from one dealer and he won’t take Republic Credits.”

He gave her an unimpressed look. “So?”

“We...only have Republic credits.”

“Even if Tatooine wasn’t a major hub, they’re only a few days out from the Boonta Eve Classic. There are _currency exchanges_.”

They both, somehow, had never thought to look and Fox found himself guiding them to one and haggling for them in return for passage back to Coruscant (he would also need to play guard for Amidala, which was no worse than any prior experience).

Part in hand, they rode back to the ship that had fled Naboo, wondering how anyone had ever had a good impression of the Jedi.

***

The ship had landed some distance away, the desert flat and expansive around it. A good tactical position for people wanting warning if anyone was closing in on them.

Obi-Wan descended the ramp to the ship when they drew close and Fox allowed himself a moment to study his soulmate. He looked so _young_ like this, from his physical age and ridiculous Padawan haircut, and without the weight of the war on his shoulders (and ten years of raising Skywalker). 

Even though he wasn’t the _same_ Obi-Wan, something about him immediately called to Fox, and he started forward before he could catch himself. When he did, coming up short, he was close enough that Obi-Wan could catch sight of the grey outline on the bare back of Fox’s hand. He’d always worn gloves, back in the future, had never given Obi-Wan the chance to see his mark.

Getting to this Obi-Wan had been the focus of his plans--he hadn’t thought how he was going to _reveal_ himself.

“You…” Obi-Wan was reaching for his hand, hesitating just enough to not be rude.

Fox didn’t have to think about it, he wasn’t going to let another lifetime go by without his soulmate, wasn’t going to let a war or the Jedi keep them apart. He reached out in return, the moment Obi-Wan touched his mark had them both gasping and falling to their knees, overwhelmed with what Fox realized had to be the beginnings of a bond.

If they did nothing more than this, it would only stay a tickle at the back of Fox’s mind, but accompanied by a desire for _more_. It was why he had never pushed to match with Obi-Wan in the last life, knowing that Obi-Wan might not give him that “more” he needed, that even if he wanted to, the war would keep them apart too often.

Jinn came up beside them. Fox caught him staring at the now-red mark on the back of his hand out of the corner of his eyes, unwilling to look away from Obi-Wan’s face.

“The Force clearly had a hand in this,” Jinn murmured, in an all-knowing tone that didn’t explain much at all.

***

Everyone gave Obi-Wan and Fox room on the trip to Coruscant, from the beginning to the very end. The handmaidens and Amidala cooed over how "exciting" it was to see soulmates meeting while Jinn watched them with a pained expression.

When Fox asked Obi-Wan about that, the answer confirmed the fears he'd thought he had left behind him.

"The Order has...very strict policies around soulmates. I think outside of the Order it's normal for soulbonds to grow in a few months?" His grimace had Fox bracing himself. "We'll have limited weekly times we can meet, when I'm not on a mission. It could take...years."

The way he said 'years' told Fox a decade or more might be possible.

"That can't be legal? The protections around soulmate pairings are Republic wide?" Fox's words were more rote than anything he needed to know.

"The Order has a unique place in the laws of the Republic." Because of course they did. "They can't keep us apart entirely, but they don't have to make it easy. I'm sorry, I'm sure you're a great person," Obi-Wan paused, giving a self-deprecating smile as if realizing he was praising himself just as much as his soulmate since they were two parts of a whole, "but if this is too much for you...I understand if you don't want to go any further."

‘And let the Jedi take even more from me?’ Fox almost said, biting back his anger and despair under his beskar-strong mental shields. "No, I want to continue this. I understand it will be difficult." He smiled, for all the expression felt unnatural on his face anymore. "I think you'll be worth it."

He didn't expect Obi-Wan Kenobi, famed for flirting even in the most dangerous situations, to fluster. He wondered just how often someone gave him sincere compliments--yet another reason to want him away from the Jedi.

***

Though he had no interest in spending more time with Amidala, he knew that he’d see Obi-Wan again by doing so, and took an offer to act as added security when they arrived on Coruscant. That also brought him close to Palpatine, making it nearly impossible to think through trying to keep up his shields and the _rage_ at knowing the man who had gotten so many of his Vod’e killed was going through with the same plot. He would be Chancellor, for a time, but Fox would not let him last too long.

It was only a few days before they left again, but long enough for Fox to slip away and find a small slugthrower on the lower levels, just in case.

***

Obi-Wan being a Padawan meant that Jinn was always there, lurking in the background. It made Fox’s head ache worse than ever to have to play nice with him, especially as he noticed Jinn’s attitude towards Obi-Wan. There hadn’t been many Padawan and Master relationships that Fox had been exposed to, but compared to the ones he had known of, theirs seemed strained.

The longer he had with Obi-Wan, the more he began to see the man he had been before, in the future. He already knew war, that much was certain from the way he approached their planning, more than what Fox had known from the files he could access.

“I was thirteen,” Obi-Wan admitted on the night before they arrived on Naboo, the two of them tucked into the small berth Fox had been given, “and I ended up stuck on a planet at war. The others I fought with were children, too, some of them even younger than I was.” Unease so strong it could be sensed even over their weak, nascent bond flowed off of him. “I hate war. But I know how important it is to _understand_ war.”

In the moments he was experiencing like this, Fox’s regret was like a physical wound. He could have had Obi-Wan in the last life, could have known this part of him already.

***

They reached the surface of Naboo, but the Gungans that they’d been expecting were elsewhere. Obi-Wan seemed resigned, in a way that told Fox his lack of luck during the war of the future had started much earlier.

Amidala proved to know something of the politics of her planet as she gained them allies, Fox reluctantly admitting she’d done well with that. He didn’t see much of her older self in this little girl and decided it might be best to not even think of them as the same person.

Binks, of course, was every bit as useless as he had been before, but the other Gungans when they met made up for that it seemed. Fox hadn’t experienced many of them and was left wondering why it was Binks who was sent to the Senate--perhaps it had been a punishment among his people and not the honor most found it for some reason. 

If he’d known then, the Guard might have handled him differently.

They left the Gungans to distract the bulk of the droids and hurried through the city towards the palace, the half-formed plan making Fox uneasy even though he knew that somehow it must have worked the last time.

Even though he hadn’t caught them on Tatooine, Maul found them in the hanger as they made their way to the throne room. The Jedi were taken aback by his presence, nothing having prepared them for a Sith Lord, not even an apprentice. Even Fox could feel the chill around the Sith, making him wonder what the Jedi themselves must feel. 

It didn’t matter, in the end, how unprepared his companions were. Fox had been wanting to kill this particular Sith for years and Maul hadn’t known to expect someone who knew his style and wasn't intimidated by his presence.

The only thing Fox regretted as Maul’s body fell to the ground, a slug to the brain, was that he didn’t get to punish him more. Maybe _this_ Maul hadn’t tormented and obsessed over Fox’s soulmate, hadn’t continually drawn Obi-Wan’s attention in a way no one should have been able to, but Fox still remembered those reports. Still remembered the way Cody had spoken of the encounters Obi-Wan had, of how he’d been when he’d come back from Mandalore.

Jinn was injured, but survived. It meant Obi-Wan’s focus was on him, not Fox, until the medics reached them, which had Fox’s anger surging back to the forefront. The Jedi barely mattered--once he did whatever it was Jedi Masters did to Knight their Padawans, he’d be useless. Fox would be in Obi-Wan’s life until the end.

***

He had never owned a home before, was not entirely sure what to do with the apartment once he had it. It was of a quality that few on Coruscant could afford, an old Senate property that had long been forgotten and for which Fox had carefully erased any flimsytrail.

The long, boring stretches between being able to see Obi-Wan was at first filled with figuring out how to live like a natborn did. He decorated, he cooked, he found flimsybooks and decorations that delighted Obi-Wan when he could finally visit.

It was not a life that Fox had ever wanted, but it was all he could manage for the moment.

The Sith artifact he’d moved to his office whispered to him in the most boring moments, reminding him of all that was still wrong in this time.

***

Obi-Wan could see him once a week, the Jedi Council decided, one evening for ‘dates’. 

Their meeting times were still not their own. Any Jedi could call on Obi-Wan and he would answer, leaving in the middle of dinner, or a holodrama, or anything else, apologizing profusely and looking miserable.

Most of the time, the issue _was_ time sensitive. Until it wasn't.

Until it was Jedi simply desiring answers _now_ instead of waiting for Obi-Wan to return to the Temple. Masters who thought nothing of stealing time away from a young Knight.

Obi-Wan was a conscientious partner, he updated Fox as often as he could on what was happening and why. It didn’t stop Fox from slicing into his comm so that he could receive copies of all incoming and outgoing messages, just in case.

Of course the worst of the Jedi from his last life were still tormenting Fox in this life. And Knight Pong Krell appeared to be yet another who had no qualms about taking advantage of Obi-Wan’s inability to tell the Jedi ‘no’.

Fox raged around his apartment after Obi-Wan had left to answer what would undoubtedly be some routine issue that could have been addressed the next day.

And then, because raging had never helped him before, because his head was pounding as though an AT-AT was kicking it and the whispers were blaring inside his skull, he started to plan.

***

Killing Krell was surprisingly easy. He was too arrogant to take the threat Fox presented seriously, too sure of his powers to think someone who wasn’t a Jedi could take him down.

There was so much satisfaction in killing him that Fox wished he hadn’t waited, that he’d tracked him down and done this just to do it. Killing the Jedi felt natural, felt _right_. He was protecting others, protecting Obi-Wan. Avenging the Vod’e who would never exist.

So Fox looked into the movements of some of the other Jedi he could remember treating his Vod’e badly, his eidetic memory bringing up countless reports and rumors. The Order’s systems were ridiculously easy to access from what seemed to be the Chancellor’s terminal and creating a few careful back doors ensured he’d be able to get back in even if they somehow fixed those flaws.

And if, at times, the Jedi weren’t ones who had wronged his Vod’e, but instead were ones who had seemed a bit too close to Obi-Wan on one of Fox’s rare visits to the Temple or in the comm messages they sent, only Fox would ever know.

Each Jedi took weeks, some months, of work. Of careful tracking and studying. Fox, with little else to do, found it a welcome respite from waiting on Obi-Wan’s free time. He used the money siphoned from the Senate and Sith to hunt the Jedi down (ignoring the irony of that as much as he could). Sometimes he followed them on missions and made it look as though they had gone wrong, sometimes he simply found ways of killing them when they visited the lower layers on Coruscant.

The next time Obi-Wan visited after Fox had truly started, he was unsettled. Even through their still-weak bond, Fox could feel that. There was someone killing Jedi, he confided to Fox. Probably a group, considering how easily they seem to have committed each murder.

If he was scared, he valiantly didn’t show it, but Fox still wished he could comfort him more. Could assure him that _he_ would never be hunted in such a way. He was the only one that deserved to be protected, to be cherished. Not the people who tried to keep him from Fox.

***  
For Jinn’s death, he didn’t mind waiting, wanting it to be perfect. Wanting to make him suffer. With no Anakin, Obi-Wan’s free time should have belonged to Fox, but instead Jinn was there, stealing it.

Obi-Wan was Knighted within a year of Naboo, he didn’t need a Master around anymore after that. It was time enough for Fox to hear of all the ways Jinn had failed him, to wonder at how many more ways he had in the last lifetime.

So Fox didn’t just make it look as though a mission had gone wrong, he mapped out a careful plan, making it look as though it was all Jinn’s fault, that a catastrophic conflict erupted because of him. 

He died a failure.

***

After that, Obi-Wan came over more often, shrugging away the constraints the Council placed on him and sneaking into Fox’s apartment night after night.

He refused to think of Amidala and Skywalker, they weren’t like them--Skywalker had been a monster and Amidala a fool.

“The Council sees soulmates as a test of a Jedi’s adherence to the Code, given by the Force,” Obi-Wan told him one night, lying with his head on Fox’s chest, their hands tangled together. “That we could still put the whole before the part, that we could not be overly attached to our soulmates.”

“That’s cruel.”

Obi-Wan chuckled, wry. “I never gave much thought to it, before, but now that I have you...I realize it is. There’s no reason that you should ever be a part of my missions, no reason I’d have to choose you over following my orders.” He turned his head so their eyes could meet. “The Temple...it’s awful right now. All the deaths, murders and accidents, and who knows what else, morale has never been so low. Some people think...they think the Force itself wants to destroy us.” His voice dropped low, to a whisper, “Some people think it’s because we’re supposed to embrace natural occurrences like soulmates, that what the Order does is unnatural.”

Their bond had grown ever stronger over the weeks that Obi-Wan had visited, it lessened the pain in Fox’s head, quieted the whispers he’d been teaching himself to ignore. Fox knew most Jedi didn’t have the chance to bond in such a way, that if it wasn’t for what _he_ was doing to the Jedi, Obi-Wan might still be under too much scrutiny to sneak away.

All the more reason what he was doing was right.

***

His activities with the Jedi were almost like practice for Palpatine. He’d made himself a feature around the Senate, taking a part time position for one of the Outer Rim Senators no one cared about.

Security was as bad as he remembered it had been when he’d first gotten to Coruscant as a trooper. The Red Guard were bodyguards and some sort of Sith disciples, maybe, but they were not true security professionals.

They hadn’t even noticed him slicing into the holocams and putting them on a loop. They hadn’t noticed how convenient an emergency it was that called so many of them away. And they hadn’t noticed a figure in white and red armor slip into the Chancellor’s office when no one else was supposed to be inside.

Palpatine died choking on his own blood, staring into the helmet of a Vod’e, unsettled even in that moment but not knowing why.

***

The Jedi Order began to shed members, many whispering that the greater power they believed in was what was killing them, since no one could find him, or even decide _what_ was behind the deaths. As the scandal of the Chancellor’s death rocked through the Republic, it became even easier to see the fissures within the Jedi.

Fox and Obi-Wan’s bond finally snapped into place soon after, Obi-Wan a near-constant presence in Fox’s apartment. It left them so closely tied together that they could feel each other no matter where in the galaxy they were. But it also left them wanting to never be apart again.

“Move away with me,” Fox asked against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, feeling the way the muscles flexed and twitched as they moved. “To Alderaan, to Naboo, wherever.”

There was silence, filled just with their breathing, before Obi-Wan gave a frantic nod. “Yes, wherever,” he replied, clutching Fox tighter, eyes squeezing shut against the feelings of joy that Fox sent down their bond.

After, when they were washing each other off in the fresher, he admitted, “Everyone’s...everyone’s dead. My friends. Qui-Gon. The Temple feels like a graveyard.” 

Fox’s mind went to the future he’d stopped, to the Jedi Purge that would never happen, and he distracted Obi-Wan with a kiss instead of a reply.


End file.
